Death by Association

by Paula Darnell

  “Uh, oh. I see what you mean. But do you think she’d be capable of actually murdering her own father?”

  “I don’t think so, but Courtney’s a strange girl. She’s always been a little unpredictable, I think. Maybe Victor did or said something that pushed her right over the edge.” Liz sighed. “I don’t know. Maybe I shouldn’t be speculating.”

  “Well, I guess anything’s possible. I don’t think the police have arrested anyone yet. A couple of detectives came by to ask me some questions this afternoon, but I don’t really know much. I did tell them that Sonya had threatened Victor, but she’s certainly not the only person in Hawkeye Haven who held a grudge against him.” I paused, thinking again about how angry Sonya would be when she found out I had told the detectives what she’d said about Victor. “Did the detectives stop by your house, too?”

  “If they did, I missed them. I just got home a few minutes before I called you. Friday’s my day at the hairdresser, you know, and then I had lunch with some of the girls.” I knew that “the girls” Liz was talking about were all old friends of hers she’d known for decades. Liz had stayed in touch with former neighbors, too, and she often visited with those who still lived in town. “After that, I shopped till I was about ready to drop.”

  Liz stopped to pour herself another glass of wine, which she sipped as we both watched Bear swim for several minutes. After he tired of the sport, he emerged from the pool and shook himself mightily. Luckily, we were far enough away from him on the patio that we avoided the deluge. He trotted over to me, and, taking a fluffy towel I had brought with me, I rubbed him vigorously. Thanks to his thick undercoat, he was still damp, but at least he wasn’t dripping wet anymore. Bear lay down with his nose across my right foot and was soon in doggie dreamland, but his snooze was interrupted a few minutes later when we heard knocking at Liz’s back gate. Bear jumped up, barking, and ran to the gate.

  “Hey, there, big boy.”

  I didn’t recognize the voice until I saw Luke standing outside the gate.

  “Hi, Luke. Come in.” I led him to the patio, and I noticed that Liz had a strange, almost shocked, expression on her face when she saw him. I remembered that just yesterday he had removed her from the HOA meeting on Victor’s orders, so I thought maybe that was the reason for the look she was giving him although I also recalled that she hadn’t displayed any animosity toward Luke when he’d escorted her out of the meeting room. Odd.

  Luke nodded to Liz and said, “I was on my evening rounds in the rover, and I noticed that your garage door was open. I knocked on the front door, but then I heard voices from out here, so I figured you were in the backyard. Just thought I’d check to make sure everything’s okay.”

  It was nice of Luke to give the reason he did for letting Liz know that her garage door was open. (HOA Regulation 86 states that “garage doors must be closed at all times except for ingress/egress or when a member of the household, contractor, or service personnel is working in the garage or on the property.”) Luke didn’t push the rules at people the way Patty did, and I liked him for that.

  “Oh, goodness.” Liz’s face turned red. “I thought I had closed it. Let me go see to that right now.”

  “Don’t worry, Liz. I’ll close it.” I volunteered. “Stay, Bear.” I definitely didn’t want Bear following me into the house. Miss Muffet certainly wouldn’t have appreciated her nemesis invading her territory.

  When I returned, I was surprised to see Liz chatting with Luke while he showed her some pictures in his wallet.

  “You have a beautiful family, Luke,” I heard Liz say.

  “Thanks, Ms. Dawson. Well, I’d better get back to it.” I started to follow him, but he said that he would close the gate, so I sat back down beside Liz, who now had a wistful look on her face. Something was going on, but I had no idea what it was.

  I declined Liz’s offer of another glass of wine, and she poured herself a third glass.

  “Is something wrong, Liz?” I asked. “You seem upset.”

  Tears rolled down her face, dragging two short trails of black mascara and making little tracks in her perfectly applied make-up. Dabbing at her eyes and cheeks with a cocktail napkin, she sighed deeply.

  “He doesn’t know it, but Luke’s my grandson,” she whispered in a tone so low that I almost didn’t hear her.

  “What?” Although Liz had been married four times, she’d had only one child that I knew of, a somewhat pompous character named Leonard, after his father, Liz’s second husband, and, to my knowledge, Leonard and his wife had no children, but I supposed that maybe Leonard could have had a son with a woman he hadn’t married.

  “Leonard’s boy?” I asked.

  “No, Lenny doesn’t have any children, but Lenny’s not my only son. When I was sixteen, I had a baby, and I gave him up. I never saw him again.”

  “Oh, Liz, I’m so sorry,” I murmured.

  Bear had settled himself at my feet once more, the sun had set, and there was something about the warm evening, the darkness, and the wine that seemed to put Liz in the mood to tell me her secret. I had known Liz since I’d moved into the house next door to hers three years earlier, but she’d never before breathed a word about the child she’d given up. As she set down her wine glass and began to speak, we were transported sixty years back in time.

  “It was long ago, yet sometimes when I think about it, it seems as though it happened only yesterday. I grew up in an orphanage in Chicago, Laurel. I never knew my parents. It was such an awful place. I was a rambunctious, boisterous kid, and I was always getting into trouble. By the time I was fifteen, I’d had enough. I ran away and never looked back. I hitched a ride with a trucker who was going to Center City, and that’s how I came to live in Iowa.

  “Of course, I didn’t have any money, so I made the rounds of the local restaurants looking for a job, but I didn’t have any luck. A service station attendant—nobody pumped their own gas back in those days—found me hiding in the restroom when he was locking up the gas station for the night. To make a long story short, I ended up marrying that boy. I say ‘boy’ because he wasn’t that much older than I was, but we managed to sweet-talk a justice of the peace into marrying us without our having to prove our ages.

  “It was great for the first few months, and we had a lot of fun together. Dennis worked at the gas station, and even though he didn’t make much money, we were able to rent a tiny apartment. Everything changed when I told him we were expecting a baby. I can still remember how excited I was, and I thought he’d be happy, too, but he wasn’t. He didn’t say much, but a couple of days later, he disappeared. He left for work and never returned. I don’t know what happened to him, but I always thought he couldn’t handle the responsibility, and so he walked away. I never saw him or heard from him again.”

  “You must have been frantic.”

  “Oh, I was. Not only was I all alone, but the rent on our apartment was due, and I had only enough food to last for a few days. I didn’t know anybody in town, except Dennis, and now he was gone, but that wasn’t the worst of it. I had no way to support myself, let alone our baby. When I told our landlord what had happened, he wasn’t unsympathetic, but he said he couldn’t let me stay in the apartment indefinitely because he depended on the rent to support himself.

  “He suggested that a home for unwed mothers might take me in, even though I was married, since my husband had deserted me. The landlord was a nice enough old gent, but I could see that my predicament was more than he could handle. He allowed me to stay in the apartment for a while, he bought me some groceries, and he offered to drive me to the home. I really felt that I had no other option, so when Dennis didn’t come back after a couple of months, I took the landlord up on his offer.

  “The worst thing I’ve ever done in my life was to give my baby up for adoption, but I wanted him to have what I hadn’t—a solid family. The people at the home promised that my baby boy would be adopted by a good family, one that could provide for all his needs.
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  “Liz, how awful for you!” I exclaimed. “I know it was a horrible decision to have to make.”

  “Yes, but I really felt I had no choice. Things were so different back then. For one thing, adoption records were sealed. It took me several years to get on my feet, but after I married Lenny’s dad, we tried to find out who had adopted my baby, but we didn’t have any luck. It wasn’t until just a few years ago that I finally found out who had adopted him.”

  “Where is he now?” I asked.

  Choking back tears, Liz whispered, “He’s gone. He died in Vietnam during the last year of the war.”

  “Oh, Liz, I’m so sorry.”

  “It was a long time ago. Still, I think about him every day, and every day, I regret that I didn’t keep him. How could I have been so stupid?”

  I patted her arm. “You were trying to do what you thought was best for him at the time.”

  She shook her head. “I was wrong.”

  We sat for a long time without speaking, Liz lost in her memories. I knew that nothing I could say would comfort her, but even though her son was lost to her forever, her grandson didn’t have to be.

  “What about your grandson, Liz? It’s not too late to have a relationship with him and his family. I noticed that he was showing you some pictures in his wallet.”

  “I don’t know how he’d feel about it, and I don’t want to disrupt his life. He seems like such a nice young man.”

  “He sure does. I bet he’d welcome the news that he has a grandmother.”

  “I’m sure that’s the last thing on his mind. I don’t know what he was told about his dad or whether or not he realized that his father had been an adopted child. In fact, I didn’t even know that I had a grandson until a few weeks ago when I read a story in our HOA newsletter about the new head of security for Hawkeye Haven—Luke Johnson—and as soon as I saw his picture next to the story, I knew. He’s the spitting image of his grandfather. I almost fainted when I saw that picture. I thought I was looking at a picture of Dennis. Of course, Luke is quite a bit older than Dennis was when he left me, but I just knew he had to be my grandson. Just to be absolutely certain, I hired a private detective, who was more thorough than the others, and, sure enough, I was right.”

  “Liz, I think you should tell him. I know it’s a cliché, but, in this case, it’s true: nothing ventured, nothing gained. It’s quite a coincidence that he’s working right here in Hawkeye Haven, don’t you think? Could be an omen.”

  “Maybe so.”

  “You missed so much—your son’s whole life—but you don’t have to miss out on your grandson’s life, too.”

  “I’ve been telling myself the same thing. What if he hates me?”

  “He’s not going to hate you.”

  “Lenny might, especially since I’ve kept him completely in the dark about his brother. And there’s something else—I’m pretty sure Lenny’s not going to like sharing his inheritance with someone he never knew existed.”

  “Hopefully, he can come to accept his brother’s son in time.” From the little I already knew about Lenny, I was probably engaging in wishful thinking. I was afraid that, no matter what Liz did, somebody was going to be unhappy. Better Lenny than Liz, who had suffered too much and too long, in my opinion.

  “Perhaps,” she agreed, although I could hear her voice quavering, and I knew that no matter what she decided, her path would be a difficult one.

  Chapter 7

  Arriving at class with only a few minutes to spare the following morning, I found several women, waiting in the hallway, unable to enter the classroom because the door was locked. The door had always been unlocked each time I’d taught classes, and, since I didn’t have a key, I searched the building for someone who could open the door for me. Employees of the HOA management company didn’t work on weekends, so at least I didn’t have to check with the obnoxious Patty, who would have been quick with a nasty comment if she’d seen me. I checked both the security office and the sales office, but they were locked, too.

  Except for me and my waiting students, the building appeared to be empty. I was hoping that I wouldn’t have to cancel the class. I decided to check the storage area in the back of the building where the maintenance workers kept their cleaning supplies.

  A thin wisp of smoke floated into the hallway through the open door of the storage room, and when I peeked in, I saw a young man wearing jeans and a blue work shirt with his name embroidered on the pocket, sitting on a folding chair, a cigarette in one hand and a can of soda in the other. Startled, he jumped up when he saw me and quickly crushed his cigarette out on the top of the soda can.

  “Uh, Kenny?” I said, reading the name embroidered on his shirt.

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m teaching a class this morning in Room 110, and the door’s locked. I wonder if you could open it for me. Class is supposed to start in a few minutes.”

  “Oh, sure,” he mumbled, not meeting my gaze.

  He grabbed some keys that were hanging on a peg beside the door and followed me down the hallway to the classroom. Kenny looked embarrassed, probably because I’d caught him smoking in a no-smoking building or maybe because he had forgotten to open the classroom.

  There was quite a crowd waiting by the time we reached the classroom, and the students stepped aside when they saw us so that Kenny could unlock the door. I noticed that Cynthia seemed to recognize Kenny, but when she greeted him, he answered her with a grunt and quickly took off down the hallway.

  “Hmmm. Isn’t he Rachel Casswell’s boy?” she asked Amy.

  “Looks like him, but I’m not sure,” Amy said. “Not too friendly, is he?”

  “Teenagers,” Cynthia remarked, shaking her head.

  As I waited for all the students to push their way through the bottleneck at the door, I scanned my class roster. Although I had glanced at the roster earlier, just to find out how many students had signed up for the class, I hadn’t looked at the names. In addition to students like my friends Amy and Cynthia, who attended the DIY earrings classes on a regular basis, a few names appeared that I hadn’t expected to see. Alice Sandstrom, for one; Courtney, for another. And Sonya. Each one worried me for a different reason. I was afraid that Mrs. Sandstrom would have difficulty seeing the tiny components that we would be using to make earrings. I remembered that Alice’s next-door neighbor, Amber, had confided in me that she thought Alice shouldn’t be driving because of her poor vision. Hopefully, Alice would be sitting at a table with someone who could assist her because, with forty students registered, I probably wouldn’t be able to spend more than a few minutes with any one of them.

  After giving it some thought, I realized that Courtney had probably registered for the class several days earlier, long before her father had been murdered. I doubted that she would show up. Then there was Sonya. I could only imagine the harsh words she’d have for me if the police had already questioned her, and she’d learned that I’d betrayed her confidence. I didn’t relish the idea of having a confrontation with Sonya, especially in front of the class, so, coward that I am, I hoped that the detectives hadn’t talked with her yet.

  As they filled the room, the students seated themselves, four to a table. I counted the chairs available, and their number exactly matched the number of students enrolled. If everyone who’d enrolled showed up, each student would have a place to sit, but if extra students came at the last minute, I’d have to scramble for more chairs. I had a feeling that Kenny hadn’t unlocked any other rooms, which I would have raided for extra chairs. If too many more students showed up, I’d probably have to go find him again, a chore I didn’t relish. Putting thoughts of the sulky teenager aside, I set up my samples, distributed kits of jewelry supplies packed in plastic baggies, booted up the computer, and switched on the projector. By the time I was ready to present the project instructions, everyone had found a place to sit. Just four empty chairs remained. So far, so good.

  Step-by-step, I explained the simple directions
for the first project, advancing my PowerPoint presentation as I showed the students how to assemble their earrings. Then I held up my samples—sterling silver chandeliers with loops of dangling, delicate chain and a drop in the center—for the class to see. I’d made three samples, each with a different drop in the middle so that the students could see how varying the center drop could change the look of the earrings. One pair of earrings featured a sterling silver drop, another featured a pearl drop, and the third featured a red crystal drop. I handed the three sample earrings sets, each to a different student, so that they could examine the project more closely and then pass it on to other students. A couple of latecomers had drifted in during my presentation, but since we still had room for two more students, I began circulating around the room to answer questions and help the students. Although the chain chandelier earring project was a simple one, first-timers needed some assistance with basic techniques. I was demonstrating the correct way to open a jump ring when the door opened, and Sonya rushed in and found a place to sit. Since she didn’t have a kit yet, I couldn’t ignore her, so I delivered one to her.

  “Hi, Sonya. You’ll need this kit for the earrings,” I said nervously, handing her the packet of earring components.

  “Thanks. Sorry I’m late. Can you believe that the cops showed up at my house this morning and implied that I might have had something to do with Victor’s death?” she asked without waiting for my reply. “Then, even though Tommy had promised me that he’d watch the kids this morning, he took off when someone from the club called him, needing a fourth for golf. I was finally able to get my neighbor’s daughter to babysit at the last minute,” she finished breathlessly.

  One of her tablemates raised an eyebrow, and a look passed between the other two students at Sonya’s table. I wasn’t sure what the look signified, but, at least, Sonya hadn’t confronted me about sharing her secret with the police detectives.